With his 12th league goal of the season, Javi Puado was the hero of the hour when his opening strike and next assistant helped Espanyol Las Palmas to overcome 2-0 in the RCDE stage and to secure a second consecutive season in Laliga.
The comparison was easy for Espanyol; Win and they would survive, regardless of events in the Estadio Municipal de Butarque between Leganes and Basement Boys Real Valladolid.
However, after Roberto Fernández went under pressure from Scott McKenna, Las Palmas had two good opportunities to take the lead. Joan Garcia pounded a long -distance effort of Enzo Loiodice away from the bottom corner for the first time, before he barely did a minute later, when Las Palmas cut through the lines and Manu Fuster saw his gunshot sent away for a corner.
Both Espanyol fans and players were then treated to some unwanted news, while Leganes took the lead at 375 miles away and Espanyol stuck in the relegation zone based on their inferior H2H record against Los Pepiner.
The bad news from Espanyol soon got worse with two more goals for Leganes for the break, and although they were now breaking their efforts to break through after much needed cooling, the chances still remained thin.
Their best chance in the remaining first half of the first minute was erased by Juanma Herzog at the end of a promising Jofre Carreras, cross the area.
With only 45 minutes left to save itself, Espanyol had the first clear chance of the second half, when Pere Milla sent the ball wide from a promising position – although Jaime Mata soon had a better for Las Palmas that forced GarcÃa in a rescue on his nearby pole.
The nerves remained the supreme rule, but at 63 minutes Espanyol got a huge lifeline when Dario Essugo Alejo Veliz fell from behind in the area. After seeing three of his previous four league goals coming from the penalty spot in the second half, Puado was the most important candidate to perform, and he certainly did, so Dinko Horkas was sent in the wrong way and calmly his Spot-Kick rolled right from the middle of the net.
Roberto saw the latest changes from Espanyol in favor of Alvaro Aguado, clearly pointing to the wish of Manolo Gonzalez to keep the store and guarantee safety.
Almost poetic, his decision was completely justified with eight minutes left, when a hopeful cross saw the area in the area Knockdown from Puado to Milla, who had time and space to seal the precious points with a quiet finish in the corner of the Net van Herkas.
In addition to capturing safety in the final chapter of a largely stressful season for Espanyol, the result marks their seventh victory in eight Home League H2HS against Las Palmas. As for the visitors themselves, today's defeat is just a different addition to what a disastrous 2025 has been (W2, D4, L14), in which they have only built up one clean leaf.